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OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

Editorial Committee
J. BARTON M . N . A . B O C K MU E H L
M . J . E DW A R DS P . S . F I D DE S
G. D. FLOOD S . R . I . FO O T
D. N. J. MACCULLOCH G. WARD
OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity

in Nineteenth-Century England
Serenhedd James (2016)
Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Zachary Purvis (2016)
Angels in Early Medieval England
Richard Sowerby (2016)
Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi
The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint
Clare Copeland (2016)
Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology
Brandon Gallaher (2016)
Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the
Time of the Carolingian Reforms
Renie S. Choy (2016)
Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents
Aḥmad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥiṣārī and the Qāḍ īzādelis
Mustapha Sheikh (2016)
A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja
A Comparative Study in Divine Embodiment
Brian Philip Dunn (2016)
Kierkegaard’s Theology of Encounter
An Edifying and Polemical Life
David Lappano (2017)
Qur’an of the Oppressed
Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam
Shadaab Rahemtulla (2017)
Ezra and the Second Wilderness
Philip Y. Yoo (2017)
Maternal Grief in the
Hebrew Bible

E K A T E R I N A E. KO Z L O V A

1
 3
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 To my father
«Будем мы искать тебя
В неба синей скатерти—
Там теперь твой дом.
К самолетам рейсовым
Прилетай, погреешься,
Мы ждем.» А. Розенбаум
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I wish to thank my doctoral supervisor, Professor Hugh

Williamson. I am extremely grateful to him for his erudition, patience, tact,
and unfailing support. I am indebted to him for both the guidance he
generously provided throughout the years of my studies and the freedom he
allowed me to explore and pursue ideas for this research. On many occasions
he went above and beyond the call of duty in assisting me with this project and
his commitment to students’ success is indeed unrivalled. I cannot believe he
agreed to supervise me but I will always remain grateful that he did!
I also feel very fortunate to have been able to benefit from the intellectual
stimulation that permeates Oxford. Among the many people who saw me
through this project, I would like to acknowledge Professor Kevin Cathcart.
I am indebted to him for his untiring work in teaching languages to graduate
students; for all his help, feedback, and comments on my work, as well as for
his kindness, encouragement, and generosity with his time. I also wish to
express my gratitude to the members of the Oxford Old Testament Graduate
and Senior Seminars, faculty and students at the Oriental Institute, and the
Postgrads at St Aldates Church. As colleagues and friends, they brought
balance to my time in Oxford and inspired me to do work with care and
vigour.
My academic journey, and this book as part of it, would not have been
possible without the tremendous support and encouragement I received from
my seminary professors: Richard Carlson, James Bruckner, Klyne Snodgrass,
Phil Anderson, Linda Cannel, Phillis Sheppard, Jo Ann Deasy, Michael Beet-
ley, and many others. I have been a fortunate recipient of both their academic
instruction and friendship, and they moved heaven and earth to make my
studies at Oxford possible. In addition, I would like to acknowledge D. and
G. Boocks, M. Wilson Loyola, M. Putera, W. and B. Slough, and B. Toole, who
greatly assisted me through various means and at different stages of my
studies. Above all, I want to express gratitude to my family and friends in
Voronezh for their unreserved belief in me and for numerous sacrifices on my
behalf. With deepest love I dedicate this book to my father.

Chapter 5 is derived in part from an article published in Scandinavian Journal

of the Old Testament on the 15th May 2017, available online: http://www.
tandfonline.com/10.1080/09018328.2017.1301641.
 Contents

Abbreviations x

1. Maternal Grief as an Archetype in the Psychology of Grief

and Ancient Near East 1
Introduction 1
Maternal Grief as an Archetype in the Psychology of Grief
and Ancient Near East 4
Modern-Day Psychology of Parental Grief 5
Gender Differences in Parental Grief: Modern-Day
Psychology of Maternal Grief 8
Maternal Grief as Paradigmatic Experience of Loss in
the Ancient World 15
Maternal Grief as an Archetype of Loss in Mesopotamian Sources 15
Maternal Grief in Ugaritic Literature 23
Maternal Grief in Hittite Sources 27
Maternal Grief in Egypt 32
Maternal Grief as Paradigmatic Experience of Loss
in the Hebrew Bible 36
Maternal Grief in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature 43
Conclusion 46
2. Hagar 49
Introduction 49
Ishmael: First Funeral in the Hebrew Bible 51
Overall Structure of Genesis and Gen. 21 52
Ishmael’s ‘Death’ and ‘Burial’: The Verb ‘to Cast’ in
the Hebrew Bible 55
The Verb ‘to Cast’ in Gen. 21:15 58
Hagar in Gen. 21 62
The Aberrant Image in Gen. 21:14: Textual Issues and
Previous Solutions 62
The Aberrant Image in Gen. 21:14: Alternative Solution 66
ANE Analogues to the Image of a Heroine Carrying
a Loved One on Her Shoulders En Route to Burial 75
Conclusion 83
3. Rizpah 87
Introduction 87
Rizpah’s Mourning in Biblical Scholarship 89
viii Contents

Midrashic Derivations of Hebrew Names: Previous

Views on the Significance of Rizpah, the Daughter
of Aiah 93
Alternative View on the Symbolism of Rizpah, the Daughter
of Aiah 95
Compositional Structure of 2 Sam. 21:1–14 Organized Around
the Issue of Remnants and Oaths that Guard Them 96
Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah 102
David as a Recipient of the Light-Based Ideology in the
Addendum (2 Sam. 21–24) and Samuel–Kings 115
Conclusion 118
4. The Woman of Tekoa 121
Introduction 121
The Speech of the Tekoite: The Syntax of Anguish 123
David’s Disposition Towards Absalom 127
Royal Deviance Narratives and 2 Sam. 14 130
David’s Oath in 2 Sam. 14:11 133
The Metaphor in 2 Sam. 14:14: Like Water Poured on
the Ground 136
The Imagery of ‘Spilled Water’ in Extrabiblical Sources 139
The Imagery of ‘Spilled Water’ in Biblical Texts 143
The Phrase ‘Like Water’ and the Verb ‘to Spill’ 148
The Verb ‘to Gather’ in the Hebrew Bible 149
Consequences of David’s Actions: 2 Sam. 15–18 150
Conclusion 154
5. Rachel 157
Introduction 157
Rachel’s Mourning in Jer. 31:15–22 159
Jer. 31:22b: A Brief Survey of Previous Views and
Their Assessment 160
Alternative Reading: Rachel’s Funerary Dance 164
Virgin Israel and Her Mourning in Jer. 31:21 188
Grave Marking 188
Ritual Wailing 191
Conclusion 194
Conclusion 197
The Modern Debate Over ‘Motherist Politics’ 197
‘Motherist Politics’ in Ancient Israel 198
Mother-Grief and Its Capacity for Intercession 199
Mother-Grief and the Attainment of Wisdom 200
 Contents ix

Mother-Grief and the Hierarchy of Mourning 201

Mother-Grief and the Politics of Care 202
Conclusion 205

Selected Bibliography 207

Index of Scriptural References and Other Ancient Sources 231
General Index 240
 Abbreviations

‘At ‘Atiqot
ÄAT Ägypten und Altes Testament
ABL R. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik
Collections of the British Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1892–1914)
ABR Australian Biblical Review
ABS Archaeology and Biblical Studies
AE American Ethnologist
AfO Archiv für Orientforschung
AJE The American Journal of Egyptology
ANE Ancient Near East
AO Analecta Orientalia
AoF Altorientalische Forschungen
Aq. Aquila
AS Acta Sumerologica
AS Archaeological Studies
ASV American Standard Version
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BDB F. Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon
of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical
Aramaic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907)
BFJ Birth and the Family Journal
BHS K. Elliger and W. Rudolph (eds), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung, 1983)
Bib Biblica
Bijdr Bijdragen: International Journal in Philosophy and Theology
BJCP British Journal of Clinical Psychology
BM Beth Mikra
BN Biblische Notizen
BR Bible Review
BS Bibliotheca Sacra
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
 Abbreviations xi
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CAD I. Gelb, T. Jacobsen, B. Landsberger et al. (eds), The Assyrian
Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
(Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1956–2011)
CAT M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin (eds), The Cuneiform
Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places
(Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995)
CHD H. Güterbock, H. Hoffner, and T. van den Hout (eds), The Hittite
Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
(Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1980–2013)
CJ Conservative Judaism
CQ Classical Quarterly
CSP Critical Social Policy
CTA A. Herdner, Corpus des tablettes en cunéiformes alphabétiques
découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939 (Paris: Imprimerie
nationale, 1963)
DCH D. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1993–2011)
DD Dor le Dor
DDD K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. van der Horst (eds), Dictionary
of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1995)
DS Death Studies
ETCSL The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
Eth Ethos
ETR Etudes Théologiques et Religieuses
FR Family Relations
Gen. Rab. Genesis Rabbah
Gilg. The Epic of Gilgamesh
GKC W. Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch; trans.
A. Cowley (2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910)
HALOT L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, and J. Stamm, Hebrew and Aramaic
Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. and trans. under the supervision
of M. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1994–1999)
HAR Hebrew Annual Review
HBM Hebrew Bible Monographs
HR History of Religions
HS Hebrew Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HTS HTS Teologiese Studies
xii Abbreviations
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
IDB G. Buttrick, The Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible (New York:
Abingdon Press, 1962)
IES Israel Exploration Society
IF Indogermanische Forschungen
IMHJ Infant Mental Health Journal
Int Interpretation
IOS Israel Oriental Studies
JAC Journal of Ancient Civilizations
JAN Journal of Advanced Nursing
JANER Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JARM Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JBQ Jewish Bible Quarterly
JCP Journal of Constructivist Psychology
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JCSCS Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies
JEOL Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux
JESOT Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament
JEST Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JFR Journal of Folklore Research
JFS Journal of Family Studies
JFSR Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures
JIATAU Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University
JIH Journal of Israeli History Politics, Society, Culture
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JM P. Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. trans. and rev. T. Muraoka
(Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1991)
JNES Journal of Near East Studies
JNMD Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages
JPIL Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss
JQR The Jewish Quarterly Review
JR The Journal of Religion
JS Journal for Semitics
 Abbreviations xiii
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series
JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
KAR E. Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts (Leipzig:
J. C. Hinrichs, 1919–1923)
KBo Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (Leipzig; Berlin, 1916–2006)
KJV King James Version
KMT MJAE A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt
KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin (eds), Die keilalphabetische
Texte aus Ugarit. Einschliesslich der keilalphabetischen Texte ausserhalb
Ugarits. Teil I Transcription (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1976)
KUB Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi (Berlin: Staatliche Museen,
1921–1990)
Lan Language
LD Lectio Difficilior
LW Life Writing
LXX Septuagint
M. Kat. Moed Katan
MC Mesopotamian Civilizations
MDAIK Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo
MDN Midrashic Derivations of Hebrew Names
MSS Manuscripts
MT Masoretic Text
NEA Near Eastern Archaeology
NEB New English Bible
NIDB K. Doob Sakenfeld (ed.), The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006–2009)
NIDOTTE W. Van Gemeren (ed.), New International Dictionary of the Old
Testament Theology and Exegesis (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997)
NIN NIN: Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity
NIV New International Version
NJV New Jerusalem Version
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
Num Numen
OA Oriens Antiquus
OLP Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica
xiv Abbreviations
OLZ Orientalistische Literaturzeitung
Om Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying
Or Orientalia
OS Oudtestamentische Studiën
OT Old Testament
OTS Oudtestamentische Studiën
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
Pesh. Peshitta
PIA Publications of the Institute of Archaeology
PR Peace Review
Ps Psychiatry
PSBA Society of Biblical Archaeology, London, Proceedings
QJS Quarterly Journal of Speech
RAL Research in African Literatures
RB Revue Biblique
RBL The Review of Biblical Literature
RD Royal Deviance
Re Religion
RE Review & Expositor
RÉ Revue d’Égyptologie
RQ Restoration Quarterly
RSV Revised Standard Version
SAOC Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SHCANE Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East
Shek. Shekalim
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
SJP Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
SO Studia Orientalia
SSM Social Science & Medicine
ST Studia Theologica
SWHC Social Work Health Care
Sym Symmachus
Targ. Targum
TB Tyndale Bulletin
TCS Texts from Cuneiform Sources
 Abbreviations xv
TDOT G. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry (eds), Theological Dictionary
of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids; Cambridge, Eerdmans, 1974–2006)
TT Theology Today
ThWAT G. Anderson, G. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, and H. Gzella (eds),
Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament (Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer, 1970–)
UEE UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
UF Ugarit Forschungen
VT Vetus Testamentum
Vulg. Vulgate
WJ Women in Judaism
WSC Women’s Studies in Communication
WSIF Women’s Studies International Forum
WW Word & World
Y. Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud)
ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie
ZABR Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte
ZAW Zeitschrift für die Altestamentliche Wissenschaft
Zi Zion
 1

Maternal Grief as an Archetype in the

Psychology of Grief and Ancient Near East

I N T R O D U C TI O N

In her article ‘Motherhood and Nation: The Voice of Women Artists in

Israel’s Bereavement and Memorial Discourse’,1 Y. Guilat discusses the
works produced by women in response to the obligatory conscription of
their children into the army and their subsequent death in military combat.
Operating from a ‘primordial maternal position that predates the nation
order’,2 these women advocate for the preservation and well-being of their
children in the cycle of Israel’s militarism. One particular sculptural installa-
tion that expresses a clash between maternal aspirations and national claims,
which is noteworthy for the discussion at hand, was created by A. Littman-
Cohen and is entitled Virgin of Israel and Her Daughters.3 The installation
consists of a large military tent (mother/state) that towers over rows of empty
beehives (daughters/citizens). Guilat explains,
The nation and homeland embodied in the expression ‘virgin of Israel’ (Jer.
31:20–21) produced the simile of the beehive that the queen (the homeland)
rules. The empty beehives bask in a red light that evokes an emptied and bleeding
womb. The work exudes a sense of life and death, the ambivalence between life-
giving forces and death-dealing forces that lie at the foundations of the myth of
the great mother and the womb as a tomb, as a monument. Littman adopts this
dualism and sets motherhood and homeland in confrontation.4

1
Y. Guilat, ‘Motherhood and Nation: The Voice of Women Artists in Israel’s Bereavement
and Memorial Discourse’, JIH 31 (2012), 283–318.
2
Ibid., 307.
3
In fact, it is a part of a two-part installation called ‘Motherland Motherhood’ (1994). ‘The
work Virgin of Israel and Her Daughters was first exhibited in Tel Hai 94, a contemporary art
event taking place in the Galilee in 1994.’ Powerful photographs capturing this installation can be
seen here: http://ariane-littman.com/1994/05/virgin-of-israel-and-her-daughters/.
4
Guilat, ‘Motherhood and Nation’, 308.
2 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

Another voice of bereft and protesting maternity is encapsulated in the Dark

Elegy, a sombre ensemble of sculptures produced by S. Lowenstein in response
to her son’s murder in the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. Reflecting on
this composition, Lowenstein explains,
Initially I portrayed myself, not only at that moment of hearing the heart-breaking
news, but also in varying positions of grief, rage and hopelessness. Soon other
mothers and widows asked to participate . . . There are 75 larger than life size
pieces, each portraying a mother or wife at that moment when they first heard the
awful news of the death of their loved one to that terrorist act . . . Although the
concept of my sculpture, DARK ELEGY, was spawned out of this, my personal
tragedy, it has always been dedicated to all victims of terrorism . . . This sculpture
needs no language, it is understood by all. It is not political in any partisan sense.
It knows no borders.5
Examples of emptied, anguished, and protesting motherhood can be found in
every historical period marked by socio-political upheaval. Thus, for example,
in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, civilians in Latin
America were subjected to low-intensity conflicts and state-sponsored vio-
lence, and a great number of women were forced to organize themselves
against the oppressive regimes searching for their children and other family
members. Thus, between 1936 and 1979 Nicaragua underwent a period of
dictatorial administration, which used assassinations, abductions, torture, and
disappearances to deal with its political opponents.6 In response to this, during
the so-called Contra War, a small group of women began an operation to
establish the location or fate of their children, who were secretly detained and
then disappeared.7 The group eventually grew and came to be known as
AMFASEDEN (The Nicaraguan Association of Mothers and Relatives of the
Kidnapped and Disappeared).8 As they were doubtful that the perpetrators of
the abductions and disappearances would ever be tried for their crimes, the
main goal of the organization was, and still is, to procure reliable information
regarding the remains of the disappeared and to establish the location of
children born to the disappeared during their imprisonment.
Similarly, between 1976 and 1983 an estimated 30,000 people, primarily
students, who voiced their disapproval of the military regime in Argentina
were unlawfully detained, subjected to torture, and killed in prison camps. The
records of their ‘disappearance’ were subsequently destroyed and no public
funerals were held for them. One of the main organizations set up by the
relatives of the victims is the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, which has now
been in operation for more than three decades. In 1977, the Mothers began to

5
From http://www.darkelegy103.com/about.html.
6
S. Tully, ‘A Painful Purgatory: Grief and The Nicaraguan Mothers of the Disappeared’, SSM
40 (1995), 1597–1610.
7 8
Ibid., 1598. Ibid., 1597.
 Maternal Grief in the Psychology of Grief 3

walk every Tuesday in a non-violent demonstration around the Plazo de

Mayo, the central square near the government palace in Buenos Aires. As
they walked around the Plazo, they chanted, ‘We want our children. We want
them to tell us where they are.’ Their efforts eventually drew international
attention and human rights organizations provided assistance with public
speech making and with publishing their own newspaper. In 1983 the group
split and one sector continued to hold demonstrations until the laws of
immunity for the ‘Dirty War’ leaders were lifted. Another group began to
work with the new government, seeking legislation to recover the remains of
the disappeared.9
Likewise, the Algerian civil war in the 1990s led to the abduction and
disappearance of approximately 7,000 civilians by militias and government
security forces. Among the many activists who unleashed war against the
state-sanctioned terror is Nassera Dutour. When her son disappeared, she
doggedly searched for information regarding his location. Eventually she
became a founder of the ‘Collective for the Families of the Disappeared in
Algeria’. Operating in and outside the country, she and her partners have
sought to promote public awareness of state abuses and to bring the Algerian
government to accountability. In addition, her organization has been working
with the families of the victims, informing them of their rights and helping
them initiate official investigations into the circumstances of their loved ones’
disappearance. Furthermore, since 1998, she has rallied women, mothers, and
close relatives of the victims for weekly demonstrations in front of the
headquarters of the National Advisory Commission for the Protection and
Promotion of Human Rights. When the demonstrations were banned, she
created an online database with information on the victims to help the families
and the general public to keep their memory alive.
Similar organizations and movements were formed in the mid-1970s in
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and later in Turkey, South Africa,
and Nigeria, whose authoritarian governments abducted and ‘disappeared’
their citizens.10 In 1989, in China, following a massacre at Tiananmen Square,
a group called the Tiananmen Mothers emerged to challenge the government
by demanding a full investigation into the massacre. Its founder, Ding Zilin, a

9
For further information about the Mothers, see for example, K. Foss and K. Domenici,
‘Haunting Argentina: Synecdoche in the Protests of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, QJS 87
(2001), 237–258.
10
See, for example, U. Arifcan, ‘The Saturday Mothers of Turkey’, PR 9 (1997), 265–272;
D. Akkerman, ‘ “Take Up a Taunt Song”: Women, Lament and Healing in South Africa’, in
L. Lagerwerf (ed.), Reconstruction: The WCC Assembly Harare 1998 and the Churches in
Southern Africa (Meinema: Zoetermeer, 1998), 133–150; D. Ackermann, ‘Lamenting Tragedy
from “The Other Side” ’, in J. Cochrane and B. Klein (eds), Sameness and Difference: Problems
and Potentials in South African Civil Society: South African Philosophical Studies (Washington:
Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2000), 231–232.
4 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

mother of one of the protesters who was killed, was named ‘advocate for the
dead’11 and in 2003 was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. In addition to
fighting political terror and violence, women used the unfortunate circum-
stance of child loss for a great number of other causes.12 Well attested in the
modern world, such a phenomenon of grief-fuelled socio-political initiative
sets the stage for the following discussion on the ancient Near Eastern and
biblical discourses of maternal bereavement.

MATERNAL GRIEF AS AN ARCHETYPE IN THE

PSYCHOLOGY OF GRIEF AND ANCIENT NEAR E AST

In his work on biblical mourning, S. Olyan makes an insightful observation

that mourning for the dead is used paradigmatically for non-death-related
mourning rites in the Hebrew Bible. He writes,
the fact that petitionary mourning and other, non-death-related mourning be-
haviour is compared in several texts to mourning the dead is significant in yet
another way, for the opposite is never attested. No text compares the rites of
mourners for the dead to the rites of petitioners or others who have no direct
connection to mourning the dead. This unidirectional mode of comparison
suggests that mourning the dead and its attendant rites are somehow paradig-
matic in the thought world of the biblical texts. Petitionary mourning and similar
non-death-related rites appear to be constructed as secondary analogues to
mourning the dead, sharing its distinct vocabulary and ritual actions, and com-
parable to it in a number of ways. Mourning the dead is, in other words, the
model for other types of mourning.13
Using the extant literature(s) of the ancient Orient it can be further postulated
that in the taxonomy of both death-related and non-death-related types of
grief and their emotive and ritual expressions, it was maternal grief and the
accompanying mourning behaviour that were seen as archetypal. Although
both ancient Near Eastern (ANE) and biblical materials preserve instances of
equally expressive mourning performed by men and women, certain tradi-
tions intimate that maternal grief was more intense and its attendant rites
served as a template for all mourning in ancient Near Eastern cultures. To use

11
A. Chung Lee, ‘Mothers Bewailing: Reading Lamentations’, in C. Vander Stichele and
T. Penner (eds), Her Master’s Tools? Feminist And Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-
Critical Discourse (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 200.
12
The selection of examples of heroic mothers here is purely arbitrary and is by no means
exhaustive.
13
S. Olyan, Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 24.
 Maternal Grief in the Psychology of Grief 5

Olyan’s terminology, they were viewed and implemented paradigmatically.

A search for evidence in favour of the proposed attitudes towards mother-grief
in the ancient world will benefit from a quick survey of modern-day perspec-
tives on the subject.

MODERN-DAY PSYCHOLOGY OF PARENTAL GRIEF

A plethora of recent grief and death studies confirms the fact that among
various types of bereavement the loss of a child occasions the deepest measure
of sorrow and is the most lasting,14 so much so that older studies often
characterized parental grief as pathological, abnormal, morbid, and unre-
solved.15 In the past grief research traditionally focused on the initial phase
in the grieving process seeking to find ways to sever the bond between the
bereft and the deceased.16 In fact, according to Freud, who initiated studies in
this field in the twentieth century, mourning had ‘quite a precise work to
perform: its function is to detach survivors’ memories and hopes from the
dead’17 so that they can make necessary adjustments and learn to function in a
new, restructured lifestyle. Although his psychoanalytic perspectives were very
influential in the twentieth century,18 Freud eventually re-evaluated his under-
standing of parental grief when he lost his daughter Sophie. Apparently
nine years after her death he admitted to a friend that the desired detachment
from the dead child never happens for the bereft parents.19 Similarly, more
recent inquiries into the nature of parental grief show that parents maintain

14
D. Klass, P. Silverman, and S. Nickman, Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief
(Washington: Taylor & Francis, 1996); D. Wing, K. Burge-Callaway, P. Clance, and
L. Armistead, ‘Understanding Gender Differences in Bereavement Following the Death of an
Infant: Implications for Treatment’, Ps 38 (2001), 60 and the bibliography cited there; N. Keesee,
J. Currier, and R. Neimeyer, ‘Predictors of Grief Following the Death of One’s Child: The
Contribution of Finding Meaning’, JCP 64 (2008), 1145–1163; J. Arnold and P. Buschman
Gemma, ‘The Continuing Process of Parental Grief ’, DS 32 (2008), 658–673; B. Mallon,
Dying, Death, and Grief: Working with Adult Bereavement (London: Sage, 2008), 54–55,
66–67; C. Parkes and H. Prigerson, Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (4th edn, London:
Routledge, 2010), 142–145; J. Buckle and S. Fleming, Parenting After the Death of a Child:
Practitioner’s Guide (New York: Routledge, 2011), 41–71.
15
See, for example, C. Hindmarch, On the Death of a Child (Oxford: Radcliffe, 2009), 33–36;
Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 62 and the studies cited there.
16
For a helpful summary on the various perspectives on grief held over the last century or so
see, for example, R. Davies, ‘New Understandings of Parental Grief: Literature Review’, JAN 46
(2004), 506–513.
17
S. Freud, Mourning and Melancholia. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psycho-
logical Works of Sigmund Freud (1917; London: Hogarth Press, 1957), 253.
18
See Davies for a list and analysis of his followers’ works. Davies, ‘New Understandings’, 507.
19
Freud, Mourning and Melancholia, 239. Cited by Davies, ‘New Understandings’, 507–508.
6 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

the bond with the deceased child throughout their life time.20 Consequently
grief counselling and therapy intervention programmes no longer recommend
disengagement from the dead child as a coping strategy.21
Some of the often-mentioned aspects of the experience of loss and factors
that contribute to its lasting effects are: ‘1.) the loss of a sense of personal
competence and power; 2.) the loss of a part of oneself; 3.) the loss of a valued
other person whose unique character was part of the family system’.22 Admit-
tedly, the ‘loss of a part of oneself ’ language is very prominent in other types of
bereavement but it is particularly strong in the rhetoric of bereft parents. Since
this group of the bereft often speaks of child death as ‘a permanent loss of a
part of oneself that may be adapted to but will not grow back’,23 some studies
identify people within it as ‘existential amputees’.24 Using this rhetoric of the
new, tempered identity in connection with parental grief Davies, for example,
notes that its ‘combined biological and social dimensions produce, in general
terms, individuals who have been changed through the experience of bereave-
ment’.25 This change is so significant that some cultures go beyond the simple
recognition of this fact and adjust their bereavement language accordingly.
Thus, for instance, ‘in contemporary Israeli society not only is there a phrase,
ima shkula, meaning a bereaved mother but there are similar terms for a
bereaved father, aba sh[a]kul, and for bereaved parents, horim shkulim’.26 The
lack of proper grief language for this category of the bereaved in most cultures
only intensifies their state of an existential limbo created by child loss.27

20
Klass et al., Continuing Bonds; D. Klass, ‘The Deceased Child in the Psychic and Social
World of Bereaved Parents During the Resolution of Grief ’, DS 21 (1997), 147–175.
21
M. Field and R. Behrman (eds), When Children Die: Improving Palliative and End-of-Life
for Children and Their Families (Washington: National Academy Press, 2003).
22
R. Malkinson and L. Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement Processes of Older Parents: The
Three Phases of Grief ’, Om 50 (2005), 104. For a list of other secondary losses that accompany the
loss of a child, and more specifically infant, see Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 60.
23
Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement’, 105. Malkinson and Bar-Tur also cite
one bereft parent who says, ‘It is as if you had lost a hand and had become a cripple. In the
beginning, it hurts a lot, and one does not know how to manage without the hand. Later, it forms
a scab and is bothersome, and then, you are fitted for a prosthesis and you begin functioning.
And the prosthesis is so good that no one realizes that you are missing a hand. But in the evening,
you remove the prosthesis and you are left with a void.’ Ibid., 112; For similar views see
E. Furman, ‘The Death of a Newborn: Care of the Parents’, BFJ 5 (1978), 214–218.
24
For further bibliography on the ‘amputation image’, see Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long
Term Bereavement’, 105; D. Davies, Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites
(London: New York: Continuum, 2002), 55; Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 61
and the bibliography cited there.
25
Davies, Death, Ritual and Belief, 55.
26
Ibid., 55. Davies further notes, ‘not only do these terms have a psychological significance in
relation to bereavement, but they also carry powerful social and political significance in the
context of Israel’s military defence strategy. To have lost a son serving in the army, in defence of
the country, is deemed an honourable sacrifice for the nation.’ Ibid., 55.
27
See, for example, Foss and Domenici’s observation regarding the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo: ‘The loss of their children and the powerful social and personal implications construct a
 Maternal Grief in the Psychology of Grief 7

This shift in the understanding of the psychology of grief called for new
research questions and approaches to the subject—new strategies were sup-
posed to accommodate the entirety of grief landscape caused by child loss.
Consequently recent grief studies adjusted their focus and began to probe into
the effects of parental bereavement as they manifested themselves over the
remainder of the bereft’s life.28 Malkinson and Bar-Tur, for example, worked
with twenty-nine Israeli ageing parents whose children were killed in military
service. According to them these parents’ own
descriptions of their way of life since the death of their child point to an evolution
in the grieving process in all domains, particularly that of time. From the time-
line perspective, it is possible to identify them as three main phases of the various
expressions of bereavement. The first phase is acute grief; the second relates to
bereavement over the years, and the third, grief in old age.29
The initial stage, usually described as young grief, tends to be ‘stormy, agitated,
less focused’, exhibiting ‘intense reactions of grief and trauma and the shock
and flooding of deep pain that permeates all spheres of life . . . ’.30 The second
stage, known as mature grief, is marked by feelings of loss that are ‘more
familiar, less intense, and have become part of the repertoire of reactions
which are known in advance and are anticipated’.31 In the final stage, ageing
grief, the bereaved become older and normally develop coping strategies that
allow them to manage their sorrow better. Nevertheless, parents admit that
their preoccupation with the lost child persists and even grows with age—the
child does not exist in an external world but firmly occupies the inner world
of his/her parents.32 Contributing to this phenomenon is the parents’ fear
that with their own death their deceased child will die ‘the second symbolic

limbo state . . . Elgin suggests that the lack of a term to describe someone who has lost a child
only exacerbates this limbo: while we have the terms widow, widower, and orphan to describe
particular relational losses, the “fact that there is no name for the one who has lost a child is of
enormous consequence: The nameless live in a kind of limbo.” ’ Foss and Domenici, ‘Haunting
Argentina’, 241.
28
Klass et al., Continuing Bonds; G. Riches and P. Dawson, An Intimate Loneliness: Support-
ing Bereaved Parents and Siblings (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000); S. Rubin, ‘Psy-
chodynamic Perspectives on Treatment with the Bereaved: Modifications of the Therapeutic/
Transference Paradigm’, in R. Malkinson, S. Rubin, and E. Witztum (eds), Traumatic and
Nontraumatic Loss and Bereavement: Clinical Theory and Practice (Madison: Psychosocial
Press, 2000), 117–141; S. Rubin and R. Malkinson, ‘Parental Response to Child Loss Across
the Life-Cycle: Clinical and Research Perspectives’, in M. Stroebe, R. Hansson, W. Stroebe, and
H. Schut (eds), Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping and Care (Washing-
ton: American Psychological Association Press, 2001), 219–240.
29
Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement’, 110. Of interest here is that the acute
phase of grief with its associated psychosomatic behaviours—shock, trembling, tears—can be re-
lived by the bereft when they are interviewed in old age.
30
Ibid., 123. 31
Ibid., 123. 32
See also Klass, ‘The Deceased Child’, 147–176.
8 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

death—the loss of the child’s inner representation’ in the psyche of their

parents.33
Of pertinence for this project is also the fact that ‘the space the child
occupies [in their parents’ inner world] expands constantly . . . unlike other
types of grief where the space is preserved but remains small and makes room
for other kinds of relationships . . . ’.34 In other words, the child is eternally
present, a kind of ‘presence-absence’.35 Thus against Freud’s initial claims on
grief and the perspectives of his followers, recent studies on child loss show
that parental bereavement does not involve detachment from a deceased child.
On the contrary, it continues to invest life’s energy in the dead child, ensuring
that the relationship goes on uninterrupted.36

GENDER DIFFERENCES I N P ARENTAL GRIEF:

MODERN-DAY PSYCHOLOGY OF MATERN AL GRIEF

The features of parental grief outlined above—intensity of pain, a sense of loss

of self, long-enduring and growing bond with the lost child—become even
more pronounced in cases of maternal grief. In her article, ‘“Carving Tomor-
row from a Tombstone”: Maternal Grief Following the Death of a Daughter’,
S. Hendrick notes that in the past traditional perspectives on psychological
development were centred around ‘the male experience that emphasizes some
form of autonomy or separation as the developmental path (Kaplan,
1991:208)’.37 Feminist psychotherapists, however, put forward a new theoret-
ical framework for understanding key factors in women’s development,
and, by extension, their unique experience of child loss. Thus, for example,
Miller and Stiver claim that ‘an inner sense of connection to others is a central
organizing feature in women’s development and that women’s core self-
structure, or their primary motivational thrust concerns growth within
relationship or what is called “the self-in-relation”’.38 Consequently, when a

33
Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement’, 105. In fact, some parents admit that
their emotional involvement with the dead child eclipses ‘their emotional involvement with the
surviving children’. Ibid., 105, 116–118; Arnold and Buschman Gemma, ‘The Continuing
Process’, 658–673. The sense of loss becomes even more pronounced when the living children
leave home and the parents are ‘left with him (the deceased child)’. S. Rubin, ‘Death of the
Future? An Outcome Study of Bereaved Parents in Israel’, Om 20 (1989–90), 323–339;
R. Malkinson and L. Bar-Tur, ‘The Aging of Grief in Israel: A Perspective of Bereaved Parents’,
DS 23 (1999), 413–431.
34
Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement’, 114. 35
Ibid., 120.
36
Ibid., 125. Davies, ‘New Understandings’, 510–511.
37
S. Hendrick, ‘ “Carving Tomorrow from a Tombstone”: Maternal Grief Following the
Death of a Daughter’, JARM 1 (1999), 33.
38
Ibid., 33.
 Maternal Grief in the Psychology of Grief 9

woman’s meaningful relationship is terminated due to death it is not just a

‘loss of a relationship but as something closer to a total loss of self ’.39 This is
particularly true when a woman loses her child. In fact, writing on the
experience of pregnancy and childbirth as identity-changing events and iden-
tifying childbirth as a ‘crucible tempering of the self ’, Shainess notes that if
birth is unsuccessful it damages not only ‘the woman’s sense of self but also
her sense of self in relation to others’.40 Likewise, discussing maternal grief and
the inadequacy of cross-cultural religious responses to it, the anthropologist
Sered quotes mothers who express their disbelief at the experience, ‘How can
life intermingle with its antithesis, death? How can I love someone who no
longer exists? Is the dead child a part of me—am I now partly dead . . . ’.41 She
further explains that,
Miscarriage and neonatal death physically affect the mother in identifiable ways.
Especially during the first year of life, the psychological boundaries between the
mother and child overlap . . . during the pregnancy the baby is physically part of
the mother; breast feeding (for many women) continues this physical bond; and
social arrangements in which women have primary or exclusive responsibility for
child care reinforce that connection.42
Assessing gender differences in parental grief Schwab also observes that ‘the
mothers’ scores were significantly higher than those of fathers on the following
scales: atypical responses, despair, anger/hostility, guilt, loss of control, rumin-
ation, depersonalization, somatization, loss of vigour, physical symptoms, and
optimism/despair’.43 Likewise, surveying studies that represent the experience
of majority-culture fathers and mothers in search of gender differences and
similarities in their grief, Wing et al. report that mothers’ responses to peri-
natal death—shock, numbness, disbelief, somatic symptoms (e.g., sleep disturb-
ance, appetite problems, fatigue, etc.), anxiety, anger, guilt, withdrawal, and social

39
J. Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), 83; J. Miller
and I. Stiver, A Relational Reframing of Therapy (Wellesley: Wellesley College, Paper #52, 1991),
1. Cited by Hendrick, ‘ “Carving Tomorrow from a Tombstone” ’, 34.
40
J. Shainess, ‘The Structure of Mothering Encounters’, JNMD 136 (1963), 146–161.
41
S. Sered, ‘Mother Love, Child Death and Religious Innovation: A Feminist Perspective’,
JFSR 12 (1996), 17.
42
Ibid., 6. On the effects of stillbirth see, for example, L. Layne, Motherhood Lost: A Feminist
Account of Pregnancy Loss in America (London: Routledge, 2003). In this book, Layne tells of a
woman who describes her life after the loss of a child in stillbirth as being in limbo, a place
‘between birth and death’, ‘between heaven and hell’. She says that she now realizes that ‘there is
a Limbo, but it is not for the stillborn babies. It is for their parents.’ Ibid., 60.
43
R. Schwab, ‘Gender Differences in Parental Grief ’, DS 20 (1996), 103. See also W. Fish,
‘Differences of Grief Intensity in Bereaved Parents’, in T. A. Rando (ed.), Parental Loss of a Child
(Champaign: Research Press, 1986), 415–428; I. Levav, ‘Second Thoughts on the Lethal After-
math of a Loss’, Om 20 (1989–1990), 81–90; C. Brice, ‘Paradoxes of Maternal Mourning’, Ps 54
(1991), 1–12; V. Conway and J. Feeney, ‘Attachments and Grief: A Study of Parental Bereave-
ment’, JFS 3 (1997), 36–42; J. Cacciatore, ‘The Unique Experiences of Women and Their Families
After the Death of a Baby’, SWHC 49 (2010), 134–148.
10 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

isolation—are generally more intense and more lasting.44 Of interest here are also
Rubin’s findings on the enduring bond between surviving mothers and their dead
children. Apparently, if the disruption of a mother–child relationship happens
early on in the child’s life—for example, in infancy—many women continue to
think of them as developing, growing children and thus suffer from the so-called
‘phantom child syndrome’.45
Although a similar array of thoughts, emotions, and their physical mani-
festations has been established for bereft fathers, their course of adjustment to
child loss is nevertheless dissimilar. Thus Stroebe has demonstrated that bereft
women tend to exhibit what she calls a ‘loss-oriented’ approach—where they
focus on mourning and the associated emotions, such as loneliness, sadness,
helplessness, etc. Men, on the other hand, tend to have what she defines as
a ‘restoration-oriented’ approach—getting on with their work and life.46
According to her and her colleagues, restoration-orientation as a coping
strategy provides bereaved fathers with distractions from their loss and helps
them make adaptive life changes. This action-based grieving model means that
the bereft are likely to learn new skills and get involved in a variety of projects.
Thus they may take on new responsibilities in the family or may create
memorials to honour their child by building a bench or setting up a charity.
Another feature that characterizes paternal grief is the tendency to privatize
and silence pain. Prompted by cultural gender norms that expect men to be
decisive, autonomous, successful, and inexpressive, fathers traditionally see
themselves as emotionally ‘stronger’ than their spouses and thus keep their
emotions to themselves.47 As a result, they generally prefer to grieve when they

44
Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 62–66. Bereft parents in this study were
from Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada. See also A. Dyregrov and
S. Matthiesen, ‘Similarities and Differences in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Grief Following the
Death of an Infant’, SJP 28 (1987), 1–15; M. McCarthy, Gender Differences in Reactions to
Perinatal Loss: A Qualitative Study of Couples (Diss. Abstracts International Section B: The
Sciences & Engineering, 62 (8-B), 2002), 3809.
45
S. Rubin, ‘Maternal Attachment and Child Death: On Adjustment, Relationship, and
Resolution’, Om 15 (1984–1985), 347–52. Cited by Sered, ‘Mother Love’, 17. See also
N. Gerrish, R. Neimeyer, and S. Bailey, ‘Exploring Maternal Grief: A Mixed-Methods Investiga-
tion of Mothers’ Responses to the Death of a Child From Cancer’, JCP 27 (2014), 162. See also
Wing et al., who discuss the effect of infant death and report that some women can even feel fetal
movement long after delivery. Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 63.
46
M. Stroebe and H. Schut, ‘The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale
and Description’, DS 23 (1999), 197–224; L. Wijngaards-de Meij, M. Stroebe, H. Schut et al.,
‘Parents Grieving the Loss of Their Child: Interdependence in Coping’, BJCP 47 (2008), 31–42.
47
Studies show that general avoidance of the notion of death and dying, at least in the
Western culture(s), discourage the bereaved from displaying extreme grief reactions. In addition,
varied expressions of grief among men and women are further influenced by stereotypes of
masculine and feminine behaviours. J. Aros, P. Buckingham, and X. Rodriguez, ‘On Machismo,
Grief Abreactions, and Mexican Culture: The Case of Mr. X, the Counsellor, and the Curandera’,
JPIL 7 (1999), 85–94; A. Bierhals, H. Prigerson, A. Fasiczka et al., ‘Gender Differences in
Complicated Grief Among the Elderly’, Om 32 (1996), 303–317; J. Stillion and E. McDowell,
 Maternal Grief in the Psychology of Grief 11

are alone and are reluctant to discuss their loss with their loved ones. Thus,
studies show that being discouraged from expressing their grief openly, and
using action as an outlet, bereft fathers end up repressing and suppressing
their feelings regarding child loss.48 Additionally, according to some reports,
men keep their pain private and may grieve vicariously through their spouses,
using them as emotional outlets.49 Furthermore, to circumvent their mourn-
ing and to counterbalance feelings of powerlessness, vulnerability, and lack of
control, some fathers may resort to such destructive behaviours as drug abuse
and excessive alcohol consumption.50
Given that an individual’s experience of grief and bereavement is shaped by
many factors and that the beliefs and expectations regarding these processes
may and do vary from culture to culture, the perspectives on parental grief,
and more specifically maternal grief, outlined here, by no means can reflect the
lived reality of all people who survive child loss.51 Having said that, it is true
that ‘the majority of published findings indicate that fathers, at least in the
initial phase of bereavement, are more likely to put their energies into practical
issues—in supporting their partners and controlling their emotions—to ra-
tionalize the loss in terms of its wider implications for the family and to find
ways of diverting their grief into practical activities. Mothers, on the other
hand, are more likely to connect directly to their raw feelings, responding to the

‘The Early Demise of the “Stronger” Sex: Gender-Related Causes of Sex Differences in Longev-
ity’, Om 44 (2001–2002), 301–318.
48
C. Zeanah, B. Danis, L. Hirshberg, and L. Dietz, ‘Initial Adaptation in Mothers and
Fathers Following Perinatal Loss’, IMHJ 16 (1995), 80–93; Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender
Differences’, 68.
49
For this see I. Leon, When a Baby Dies. Psychotherapy for Pregnancy and Newborn Loss
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
50
K. Stinson, J. Lasker, J. Lohnmann, and L. Toedter, ‘Parent’s Grief Following Pregnancy
Loss: A Comparison of Mothers and Fathers’, FR 41 (1992), 218–223; M. Bibby, Grieving
Fathers: A Qualitative Investigation of the Grief Reactions of Men Who Have Experienced the
Death of a Child (Diss. Abstracts International Section B: The Sciences & Engineering, 62
(1-B), 2001), 536.
51
In fact, most, though not all, studies consulted here represent North American and
Western European contexts. For ethnographic studies on the subject see, for example,
D. Klass, ‘Solace and Immortality: Bereaved Parents’ Continuing Bond with Their Children’,
DS 17 (1993), 343–368; D. Klass, ‘The Inner Representation of the Dead Child and the World
Views of Bereaved Parents’, Om 26 (1993), 255–273; D. Klass, The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved
Parents (Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel, 1999). See also Sered’s survey of women’s responses to
child death not only in various cultures but within various religious traditions. For example, she
observes that ‘a persistent pattern in women’s religious lives is dissatisfaction with the interpret-
ations of child death offered by what Robert Redeld calls the “great tradition” and what feminist
scholars call patriarchal religions. In diverse cultural situations, women reject eschatologies that
send unsaved babies to hell, and modify theologies that ignore the suffering of children in this
world’. Sered, ‘Mother Love’, 7. For a cross-cultural survey of beliefs and myths that attests to the
enduring bond between mothers who die in childbirth and their surviving children, see B. Cox
and S. Ackerman, ‘Rachel’s Tomb’, JBL 128 (2009), 135–148.
12 Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

death through the experience and expression of strong emotions.’52 Given such
incongruent patterns in grief experience and/or grief expression, bereft
couples often face difficulties in supporting each other. Thus Wing et al.
state that:
Wives often find it hard to understand why their husbands are not grieving as
intensely as they are. Husbands are equally baffled about the greater intensity and
duration of their wives’ grief reactions. Typical patterns of male inexpressiveness
and coping behaviour often lead to a particular misunderstanding among
wives. . . . A wife often misinterprets her husband’s lower levels of grief and his
reluctance to talk about the loss as evidence that he does not care about her or
about their dead infant/[child]. . . . A husband, on the other hand, often misin-
terprets the greater intensity and duration of his wife’s grief reactions as evidence
that his spouse is ‘going crazy’.53
Summarizing findings in grief research that account for such discordant grief
and bereavement processes, Wing et al., first of all, observe that mothers and
fathers may not develop an identical bond/attachment to their child. Second,
they point out that incongruent grief can be explained by gender differences in
reaction to stress, as well as differences in ‘gender-role socialization involving
emotional expressiveness and willingness to acknowledge and report emo-
tions’.54 Third, they attribute dissimilar grief and bereavement patterns to
disparate coping mechanisms used by men and women. And finally, they note
that gender grief variables may stem from ‘the different identity configurations
and different social environments’, in which mothers and fathers find them-
selves after their loss.55 Following this summary, Wing et al. state that ‘current
available evidence does not clearly favour any of the above explanations, and it
is likely that gender differences in bereavement have their source in a com-
bination of causes’.56
Turning to the subject of maternal grief in the ancient world, it is
important to bear in mind that many anthropological studies have shown
that similar experiences which occur in disparate cultural settings do not
necessarily produce comparable emotional reactions. The same event in
one group may generate emotive and behavioural responses that will be

52
Malkinson and Bar-Tur, ‘Long Term Bereavement’, 105 and the bibliography cited there
and above. Italics are mine. See also McCarthy, Gender Differences, 3809. But for a detailed
discussion on various factors involved in both the experience and expression of grief, see
T. Martin and K. Doka, Men Don’t Cry—Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of
Grief (Philadelphia; London: Brunner/Mazel, 2000).
53
Wing et al., ‘Understanding Gender Differences’, 68. 54
Ibid., 68.
55
Ibid., 68 and the bibliography cited there. Of pertinence here is that in the case of perinatal
death there is also a pervasive tendency to blame the mother for the death of her child. Since at
that stage the child is particularly dependent on the parental figure for their safety, the mother, as
a primary care provider, is to be blamed for the child’s death.
56
Ibid., 68.
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ever was in Washington. He had a game of golf every day on the
Myopia links and grew jubilant over his scores, but for the most part
he seemed always to be attending to the business of being President.
There was an Executive Office, as I have said, but nearly always one
could find four or five men sitting on the verandah waiting to see
him. Fortunately he had a large room to himself with a private
entrance, but we grew so accustomed to running into strangers that
we came almost not to notice them and to enjoy our supposed
privacy as if they were not there.
The most interesting callers we had that summer were their
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making a tour of the world. They were accompanied by Madame
Nagasaki, the wife of the Court Chamberlain who officiated at my
husband’s first audience with the Emperor, by Colonel Kukurita, a
military aide and Mr. Matsui, Chargé d’Affaires of the Japanese
Embassy in Washington. They were escorted by representatives of
both the State and War Departments. I had never met these Imperial
personages, but when Mr. Taft and Miss Alice Roosevelt were in
Japan they had been presented to their Highnesses, so Mr. Taft
invited Miss Roosevelt, then Mrs. Longworth, and her husband to
meet them.
The day following the visit of the Prince and Princess Mr. Taft left
for a long trip through the West and I didn’t see him again until the
late autumn when we all returned to Washington.
The social season in Washington always opens with the Cabinet
Dinner in December. This is one of the regular State Dinners which
are carefully scheduled and jealously regarded as such. The others
were formerly the Diplomatic Dinner and the Supreme Court Dinner,
but we inaugurated a Speaker’s Dinner, so there are now four. These
are state functions pure and simple, but by the exercise of a little art
one can manage to make them most enjoyable affairs. To the Cabinet
Dinner only the Vice-President and his wife, the members of the
Cabinet and their wives and a few especially distinguished outsiders
are invited.
The hostess doesn’t have to worry about seating the Cabinet
officers because it is all a matter of precedence and is attended to by
the Social Executive Secretary. The rank of a Cabinet officer is
determined by the date on which his office was created and not, as
one might think, by the relative importance of his official status.
The only time when a friendly democracy presents itself to the
President en masse is on New Year’s Day. At the New Year’s
Reception he receives just as many persons as he can shake hands
with between the hours of eleven in the morning and half past two or
three in the afternoon. His wife, the wife of the Vice-President and
the ladies of the Cabinet receive with him as long as it is physically
possible for them to do so. While writing in the third person I am
thinking in the first, of course. These were our customs.
Yet if anybody unfamiliar with Washington life imagines that a
New Year’s Reception means throwing open the White House doors
and admitting the public without consideration of rank or the rules
of precedence he is mistaken. The Reception, up to a stated hour, is
as carefully regulated as any other function, and I consider the list of
the especially favoured most interesting as a revelation of the
complexity of Washington’s social life.

THE TAFT COTTAGE AT BEVERLY, MASSACHUSETTS

Announcement is made that the President will receive at 11:00 A.M.

—the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet and the Diplomatic
Corps; at 11:20 A.M.—the Supreme Court, members of the Judiciary of
the District of Columbia, former Cabinet officers and former
diplomatic representatives of the United States; at 11:30—Senators,
Representatives and Delegates in Congress; at 11:45—Officers of the
Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Militia of the District of
Columbia; at 12:15 P.M.—Regents and Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, all the various Commissions, Assistant Secretaries of
Departments, the Solicitor General, Assistant Attorneys-General,
Assistant Postmasters-General, the Treasurer of the United States,
the Librarian of Congress, the Public Printer, heads of all Bureaus
and the President of the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and
Dumb; at 12:30 P.M.—The Secretary of the Cincinnati, the Aztec Club
of 1847, the Associated Veterans of the War of 1846–47, the Military
Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the Grand Army of
the Republic, the Medal of Honor Legion, the Union Veteran Legion,
the Union Veterans’ Union, the Society of the Army of Santiago, the
Spanish Minute Men, the Sons of the American Revolution and the
members of the Oldest Inhabitants’ Association of the District of
Columbia; at 1:00 P.M.—Citizens.
As all the men present themselves in the dress uniform of their
various services or orders, or wearing the decorations they have won
in epoch-marking events, one gets a most illuminating view of
organised American patriotism.
There is an old system obtaining at the White House known as
inviting guests “behind the line.” This means that a chosen few are
permitted as special guests to be present in the Blue Room while a
reception is in progress. It is a system which has at times been so
carelessly regulated as to engender jealousies and dissatisfactions,
and we determined if possible to avoid on all occasions any
appearance of favouritism. So at our first New Year’s Reception we
decided to limit special privileges to the Diplomatic Corps, the wives
of Assistant Secretaries and our own house guests. This made the
distinction a mere matter of official rank and did away with all
possibility of unpleasant comment from distinguished members of
civilian society.
For instance, there has always been a delicate question in
connection with the Judicial Reception as to whether or not on this
occasion the Justices of the Supreme Court take precedence over the
members of the Diplomatic Corps. The Justices have always
contended that at their own Reception they do, but the unwritten
code has it that no person under the rank of President or Vice-
President ever takes precedence over an Ambassador who is the
direct representative of his sovereign.
We settled this question by inviting the heads of all Missions to the
Blue Room where they were greeted by the President before he took
his place in the receiving line, and where they were permitted to
remain as long as they desired, being, as it were, a part of the
receiving party. This was a solution which satisfied everybody and
pleased the Diplomats particularly.
A great many special arrangements are necessary for a New Year’s
Reception at the White House. For every state occasion or any large
function there are always many extra footmen, policemen, guards,
waiters, cloak room attendants and ushers on hand, but on New
Year’s Day the array of them would be most imposing if they were
not almost lost in the midst of a thronging populace. All the people
who come to these receptions do not pass the receiving line. Many of
them find points of vantage in the vicinity merely to look on, and yet
the President shakes hands with from six to eight thousand of them
before the gates are closed. I have seen the line of waiting people
stretching out through the spacious grounds, down the street,
around a corner and out of sight at a time when I had already given
up in utter exhaustion. And the way the carriages come and go in
perfect order, without a hitch, each coachman with his card of a
particular colour telling him just where to make his exit, was a thing
I never could understand.
The corps of aides arrange all these details and each department,
including the police and the secret service, has its printed and
explicit orders for the day a long time ahead. Some of the police
orders are interesting. For instance: “No person under the influence
of liquor, disorderly in his behaviour or bearing any advertisement
will be allowed in line. Conspicuously dirty persons will not be
admitted.” Also: “Except in the most aggravated case a coachman
will not be taken from his box and put under arrest. It will be
sufficient to take his name and address and arrest him on the
following morning.”
After a New Year’s Reception the White House is a sorry sight,
even though by using extra strips of carpet to protect the polished
floors and by removing fine rugs and breakable bric-à-brac every
possible precaution is taken to make the damage as slight as
possible. But it doesn’t take long to restore the house to its normal
condition. The way the crowd of workmen used to go about putting
the place in order after an invasion of this kind always reminded me
of the well-drilled stage hands at a hippodrome who manage to set
different scenes and keep things spic-and-span without even
interfering with a continuous performance.
Very shortly after the New Year’s Reception, three days later in
fact, we gave the next big event of the season, the Diplomatic
Reception. It is understood, of course, that one of the chief
occupations of the President of the United States is shaking hands. I
am moved to this observation by memories of uncounted hours by
my husband’s side in a receiving line at the White House when
thousands of guests passed by, each separately introduced to both
the President and to me and each extending an untired hand to give
and to receive the hearty grasp which all good Americans so highly
regard. And there is no conceivable form of work or exercise more
fatiguing. If it were not for the mental stimulus afforded by the
friendliness of a gay throng, by music and lights and a general festive
atmosphere, it could hardly be borne.
For Mr. Taft it was never so hard because in his long public career,
and especially through a political campaign, he had had considerable
training for it. But for me it was somewhat more difficult. My friends
used to wonder how I could stand it, but when I was well I never
found it so much of a strain that I could not very quickly recover
from it. When I was not feeling particularly strong I would resort to
all manner of innocent pretexts to give myself short intervals of rest.
I would turn around and engage in important conversation with
someone behind me; I would consume minutes in taking a drink of
water; or I would get into serious difficulty with my flowers or
something. Then, too, I sometimes would sit frankly down and let
the crowds pass by.
To me the long standing was the real strain and I soon came to a
point where I was willing to sacrifice appearance to approximate
comfort by wearing wide flat slippers with low heels.
The Diplomatic Reception is undoubtedly the most brilliant of the
set state functions which are given at the White House each year, but
to me it was never as interesting as the Diplomatic Dinner which
follows it. There are thirty-nine foreign Embassies and Legations in
Washington. Each Ambassador and Minister has his own distinctive
and sometimes very elaborate regalia; each attaché, military and
naval, wears the uniform of his service, in many cases very
picturesque and often positively flamboyant; the foreign women,
gowned exquisitely, are many of them crowned with tiaras and laden
with jewels, and when they are all gathered around one great,
glittering and gorgeously decorated table they present such a picture
of varied colour and magnificence as is not to be seen on any other
occasion in Washington.

© Harris & Ewing.

THE CRESCENT TABLE IN THE STATE DINING-ROOM

ARRANGED FOR THE DIPLOMATIC DINNER

I used always to wonder how they managed to get along with each
other. There is an impression quite general among us that we are the
only nation on earth that sends abroad diplomatic representatives
without any knowledge of the French language. This is not quite true.
There are a good many diplomats in Washington who do not speak
French, and there are more diplomats’ wives. But as both men and
women are seated at the Diplomatic Dinner in strict order of rank,
there is no chance to take into consideration the seemingly
important question as to whether or not dinner partners will be able
to communicate with each other very freely. They do speak English,
of course, but many of them imperfectly, and, taking them all, with
exactly thirty-nine different accents. Imagine the wife of the Chinese
Minister sitting between the Minister of Salvador and the Minister of
Cuba, or the wife of the Japanese Ambassador having on one hand
the German Ambassador and on the other the Minister of Costa Rica!
It all depends on how long they have been in Washington. When I
first went to the White House the Italian Ambassador was the Dean
of the Diplomatic Corps, with the Austrian Ambassador next, while
among the Ministers those from Siam and from Costa Rica, I think,
had precedence over all others. If the Minister of Haiti remained in
Washington long enough he could outrank the Minister of Spain. The
Minister of Haiti is the only negro diplomat in the Corps and his
place at table in my time was with a group of envoys of almost equal
rank who sat together near one outer end of the great crescent.
It was not possible to invite many outsiders to the Diplomatic
Dinner because there were enough of the Diplomats themselves with
their wives and attachés to tax the capacity of the State Dining Room.
But Mr. Taft never did take space limits into consideration. For both
Receptions and Dinners I used always to go over the invitation lists
and do my best to keep them within bounds. Regretfully enough
would I cut them wherever I found it possible, but my husband,
according to his fixed habit, invariably added more names than I
took off, so, thanks to him, we have to our credit the largest dinner
parties ever given in the new Executive Mansion. Mr. McKim in his
report on the restoration of the White House says the Dining Room
will hold one hundred, but strained to its utmost capacity ninety-two
was as many as I could ever crowd into it, and then everybody was
aghast at the number. We might have put a star in the hollow of the
crescent so as to accommodate a few more, but I never thought of it
until this moment. I’m glad it never occurred to Mr. Taft. With his
expansive disposition he certainly would have had it tried.
The Reception crowds I did manage to cut down. It simply had to
be done. When more than two thousand people get into the White
House it is a literal “crush” and nobody has a good time. We not only
introduced dancing in the East Room at Receptions, a feature which
delighted everybody and especially the young people, but we always
served refreshments to every guest within our gates.
This was, I suppose, the most generally approved departure from
established custom that was made during my administration. It was
made possible by cutting down the list of guests one half and inviting
one half to one reception and the other half to the next. As a matter
of fact, preparing a buffet supper for a company of 2,000 people is
not much more of a strain on ordinary household resources than
serving a nine or ten course formal dinner to eighty or ninety guests.
Neither undertaking is particularly simple, but the White House
kitchen and pantries are large and adequate, we had an efficient staff
and we never had any mishaps or embarrassments that I remember.
Several days before a large reception my cooks would begin to turn
out piles upon piles of small pastries and to do all the things that
could be done in advance. Then on the day of the reception, with
plenty of extra assistants, it was found easily possible to prepare all
the salads and sandwiches, the ices and sweets, the lemonades and
the punches that were necessary. Nor did we find that it interfered in
the least with the usual household routine. We took our meals in the
small family dining room adjoining the State Dining Room, and even
gave small and successful dinner parties while the State Dining
Room was in the hands of the carpenters and decorators.
Referring to the serving of refreshments reminds me of an incident
which gave us some uneasiness shortly after Mr. Taft’s election. It
was during that phase of his career which all Presidents pass
through, when his most casual remark was likely to be construed into
an “utterance,” and his most ordinary act was likely to become a
widely heralded “example.” It was while he was still being held up as
a model of all the excellencies—framed in a question mark: “What
will he do?” In other words it was before his Inauguration.
He was at a dinner at Hot Springs, Virginia. As the wine was being
served one of the diners turned down his glass with the remark that
he had not taken a drink for eighteen years. Mr. Taft, in the most
usual and commonplace manner, followed suit, saying that he had
been a total abstainer for nearly two years and expected to continue
so. The incident was made the basis of a sensational newspaper story
which created the impression that he had acted with great dramatic
effect and that his remark amounted to a declaration of principle
which he would turn into a Presidential policy.
Immediately he was overwhelmed with memorials, with
resolutions of commendation framed by some of the most worthy
and admirable Christian and temperance organisations in the
country. It was taken for granted that he would banish alcohol in
every form from the White House. In simple honesty he had to tell all
the reverend gentlemen that he had made no pronouncement with
regard to limiting White House hospitality, that he had no desire to
interfere with any normal man’s personal habits and that as
President he had no intention of trying to do so.
The truth is that he is a total abstainer because never in his life has
he indulged in stimulants to any extent; they have no attraction for
him whatever, and he found in those days that with so much dining
out, it was wiser to decline all wines and liquors. Being naturally
abstemious he has always rather objected to being given personal
credit for such virtue.
It was about this time that I, too, got into trouble of a peculiar sort.
In the mass of correspondence which began to roll in upon me as
soon as my husband was elected, there were requests of every
possible kind from all parts of the world. Among these came a letter
from a society of women engaged in political and social reform work
in one of the newer Balkan States, asking me to lend my aid in
forming a similar society in the United States.
I declined with as much grace and courtesy as I could command
and thought nothing more about it. Imagine my surprise to find
almost immediately that my reply had been construed by its
recipients into a sort of expression of personal interest in and
sympathy for the people of their country in general. I was proclaimed
the warm friend of the young State and an enemy to all her enemies.
The incident became the subject of an exchange of diplomatic notes
in Washington, and it took a bit of the suavity of the State
Department to extricate me from the tangle in which my alleged
active participation in the trouble in the Balkans had placed me. It
taught me a lesson.
 MRS. TAFT’S OWN PICTURE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

Throughout my four years in the White House my mail contained

surprises every day, but I soon learned not to be surprised at
petitions for assistance in various forms. It is extraordinary how
many of these a President’s wife receives. The greater number came
to me from small charitable organisations throughout the country. It
seemed to me that nobody ever thought of organising a bazaar or a
church fair without asking me for some sort of contribution, and
before holidays, especially Easter and Christmas, I was simply
besieged. They did not want money ever; they wanted something that
could be sold as a souvenir of myself. I never, to my knowledge,
refused a request of this kind. Mrs. Roosevelt had used a photograph
of the White House, and I decided, finally, to do the same. I chose a
view of the South Portico eight by ten inches in size which I thought
very nice, and asked to have it reserved for me. With my signature
across one corner it became a most satisfactory souvenir. I hesitate
to hazard a guess as to the number I signed and sent away, but,
ordered by the hundreds, they didn’t cost very much, so contributing
them to good causes became a pleasure unmarred by a sense of
unjustifiable extravagance. Handkerchiefs, too, were in great
demand and I always kept a supply of them on hand.
I see I have wandered away from the receptions and dinners and
my attempt to tell in some sort of consecutive fashion what a social
season at the White House consists of, but remembering the crowds I
lived in for four years it seems to me that everybody must know just
as much about these things as I do. I have to keep reminding myself
that I am not writing altogether for people who live in Washington,
but for the people in the far places who have never been to
Washington, but who have just as much of a personal property right
in the nation’s capital and just as much interest in the proper
conduct of its affairs whether they be legislative, administrative,
diplomatic, or merely social, as any President ever had.
 CHAPTER XIX
CONCLUSION

Our second summer at Beverly began with a call from Mr.

Roosevelt. When the ex-President returned to the United States, on
the 18th of June, 1910, after an absence of a year and a half, Mr. Taft
sent two members of his Cabinet, the Secretary of the Navy and the
Secretary of Agriculture, and his aide, Captain Butt, to New York to
meet him and to extend to him a personal as well as an official
welcome home. According to Captain Butt’s Official Diary:
“Immediately upon the arrival of the S.S. Kaiserin Auguste
Victoria at Quarantine the Presidential party scaled the sides of the
steamer by means of a rope ladder and proceeded to the staterooms
of Mr. Roosevelt where each member of the party greeted the ex-
President. Then Captain Butt, who was in full dress uniform, saluted
Mr. Roosevelt and presented to him the letter of welcome entrusted
to his care by the President. Mr. Roosevelt read it and expressed his
great appreciation of the honour of the receipt of the letter, as also
for the ordering of the U. S. S. South Carolina and other vessels to
accompany him from Quarantine to New York. Captain Butt also
presented to Mr. Roosevelt a letter (from Mrs. Taft) supplementing
the President’s invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt to pay them a
visit at the White House now or at any time when it might be
convenient for them to do so.... Mr. Roosevelt took occasion to send
his sincere appreciation and profound thanks to the President by
Captain Butt both for the official and personal welcome extended to
him.”
I removed the Presidential household to Beverly the week Mr.
Roosevelt arrived and did not see him until after Mr. Taft joined me
about ten days later. Again to quote from Captain Butt’s carefully
kept record:
 “June 30—At 3:30 o’clock ex-President Theodore Roosevelt,
accompanied by Senator Lodge, called to pay his respects to the
President. He was met at the entrance by Captain Butt, who
announced his arrival. The President immediately came out and
greeted his visitor most affectionately, addressing him as Theodore.
“Colonel Roosevelt took both hands of the President, and said,
“‘Mr. President, it is fine to see you looking so well.’
“‘But why “Mr. President”?’ laughed the President.
“‘Because,’ replied Colonel Roosevelt, ‘it used to be “Mr. President”
and “Will,” now it must be “Mr. President” and “Theodore.”’
“The President conducted his distinguished predecessor to the side
porch where they started into a series of delightful reminiscences of
the past Administration.... Colonel Roosevelt remained two hours,
during which he gave the President an interesting account of his
trip.”
I was present at this interview and remember it as being
remarkably pleasant and entertaining. Everybody will recall that the
question of Mr. Roosevelt’s attitude toward my husband was even
then a debatable one, but Mr. Taft had resolutely refused to believe
that it could ever be anything but friendly. I did not share his
complete faith, but I was glad on this occasion to find the old spirit of
sympathetic comradeship still paramount and myself evidently
proved to be unwarrantably suspicious.
Mr. Roosevelt had just been in England where he acted as the
representative of the President of the United States at the funeral of
King Edward, and that solemnly magnificent event seemed to have
overshadowed in his mind every other experience he had had during
his long absence. He described the stately ceremonies and the
mediævally picturesque procession in vivid detail and did not fail to
emphasise their grave and reverential aspects, but he dwelt
particularly, and to our great amusement, upon the humorous side of
the situation in which he had found himself.
It will be remembered that among Kings and Emperors and Czars,
and even lesser potentates, the rank of Presidents was a difficult
thing to determine. Should minor royalties take precedence over the
representatives of the French Republic and the United States of
America, to say nothing of Mexico, Brazil, Switzerland, and all the
other great and small democracies?
Mr. Roosevelt had great difficulty in finding his place. Then, too,
he was constantly running into kings and other royalties to whom he,
naturally, owed ceremonious respect. They were so numerous in
London at the time that familiarity with them bred carelessness in
one whose tongue had not been trained to the honorifics of Court
life, and he found himself making extremely funny blunders. He told
us many stories of his adventures with the world’s elect and, with his
keen appreciation of the ridiculous and his gift of description, gave
us as merry an afternoon as we ever spent with him.
I dwell on the memory of this agreeable meeting with Mr.
Roosevelt and the entertainment it afforded me, because by his
manner he succeeded in convincing me that he still held my husband
in the highest esteem and reposed in him the utmost confidence, and
that the rumours of his antagonism were wholly unfounded. I was
not destined to enjoy this faith and assurance for very long.
In mid-July of that year we started off for a short cruise on the
Mayflower, the only one we ever made. It is not really possible for
the President to have a vacation, but if he happens to be a good sailor
I know of no better way for him to get short intervals of rest than by
boarding the Presidential yacht and steaming away, out of the reach
of crowds.
We had only a small party with us, my husband’s brother, Mr.
Horace Taft, my sister, Mrs. Louis More, Miss Mabel Boardman and
the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Beekman Winthrop, and
Mrs. Winthrop; and Captain Butt, of course, was with us always.
We headed north for the Maine coast with Eastport as our first
stopping place. The mayor of that interesting city of fisheries came
on board as soon as we dropped anchor, made a felicitous speech of
welcome and proceeded to lay out a programme of sightseeing and
festivities which would have kept us there for a considerable longer
time than we could stay if it had all been carried out, and this
experience was repeated everywhere we went. We had to decline
everything except a motor ride about town for the purpose of getting
a glimpse of the weir fisheries and the sardine canneries, but a
President doesn’t visit Eastport very often, so the people thronging
the streets made it seem quite like a holiday.
 Then a committee from the Island of Campo Bello, which lies a
short distance off the coast and which is a British possession, waited
upon us with an invitation to come across and go for a buckboard
ride around a part of the island. It sounded like such a homely and
restful form of amusement that Mr. Taft was sorely tempted to break
the unwritten law which decrees that a President may not set foot
outside United States territory, but he concluded that he had better
not. The rest of us, however, decided to go and we had a jolly, jolting
ride which ended at the summer home of Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.
Everywhere we went we were most delightfully entertained,
finding beautiful homes and merry summer hosts at every port and
town. At fashionable Bar Harbor we found a colony of friends whose
winter homes are in Washington and Mr. Taft got some excellent
golf. There were luncheons and dinners, of course, every day and
everywhere, to say nothing of teas and large receptions, and Mr. Taft
had to make speeches, too, and meet all the Maine politicians. But
there were the long restful nights on the Mayflower, steaming along
among the crags and rocks of the broken, picturesque coast, or lying
at anchor in some quiet harbour with only the soft water sounds to
break the stillness, and it would not have taken much persuasion to
have kept me aboard indefinitely.
The Mayflower is used ordinarily for official purposes in
connection with naval reviews and other naval ceremonies, and at
such times, with the President on board, there is a punctilious
formality to be encountered which makes a mere civilian feel like a
recruit under the eyes of a drill-sergeant. But it is very interesting.
One gets so used to seeing everybody in uniform standing stiffly at
attention as the President passes that one almost forgets that it isn’t
their natural attitude.
And then the guns. They shake one’s nerves and hurt one’s ears,
but they are most inspiring. The President’s salute is twenty-one
guns. It is fired every time he sets foot on the deck of the Mayflower,
or any other naval vessel, and when he passes, on the Mayflower,
between the lines of naval vessels on review he gets it from every ship
in the fleet, not one by one, but altogether, so I think I know what a
naval battle sounds like.
Shortly after we returned from our little cruise on the Maine Coast
we received a visit from the President of Chili, Señor Montt, and
Señora Montt. He was on his way to Europe, having been ordered
abroad on account of ill health. He stopped in New York at the
request of his government, and at Mr. Taft’s invitation came to
Beverly to pay his official respects to the President of the United
States. He made the trip to Boston by special train and was there met
by the Mayflower and by Captain Butt.
President Montt was very ill indeed. On the way down to Beverly
he had a heart attack which alarmed everybody and made it seem
very probable that he would not be able to land. But he recovered
sufficiently to become the most cheerful and confident member of
the party and we found him and Señora Montt to be among the most
delightful of all the distinguished visitors we had the pleasure of
entertaining during our term in the Presidency. After the
ceremonious presentation and the exchange of international
compliments were disposed of they took luncheon with us and we
spent several most interesting and memorable hours together. The
members of his numerous entourage for whom there was no room in
our modest summer cottage were entertained at luncheon on board
by Captain Logan of the Mayflower and by Captain Butt. We were
told afterward that they managed to create quite an entente cordial,
toasting each other’s Presidents and armies and navies and ministers
and attachés and everybody else they could think of with great
enthusiasm and gusto. Señor Montt died a week later just as he
reached England on his health-seeking trip. In his death Chili lost an
eminent citizen.
Mr. Taft remained with us at Beverly, playing golf, attending to
routine business, seeing the never-ending line of visitors and
preparing speeches until September when there began for him one of
those whirlwind seasons, so many of which he had lived through.
With a printed itinerary in his pocket he was off from Boston on the
third of September to attend the Conservation Congress at St. Paul.
With two speeches to be delivered, one at the Congress and one at
the State Fair in Minneapolis, to say nothing of another in Chicago
and numerous short speeches from the rear platform of his train, he
was still back in Boston on the eighth to be present at an aviation
meet where together we saw the performance of the best aviators of
that day.
 A short interval of rest and he was away again to New Haven to
attend a meeting of the Yale Corporation, then out to Cincinnati to
the Ohio Valley Exposition and back to Washington as quickly as a
long programme of speeches and hospitalities could be disposed of.
The political skies were then beginning to cloud up in earnest; he
had a Democratic Congress to prepare messages for, and I suppose
the approaching winter looked anything but alluring to him.
For the first time in the history of the Executive Mansion it was
turned into a bachelors’ hall during my various absences. My
husband always had one or more men staying with him, he would
move his aides and secretaries into the White House, and so arrange
things that my frequent desertions of him never weighed very heavily
on my conscience.
When he arrived in Washington this time he organised a Cabinet
House Party so that Washington and the newspaper correspondents
had something to worry about for quite a while. He gathered all the
members of his Cabinet under his roof and kept them there where he
could have three Cabinet meetings a day besides the ones he called in
the Executive Offices. People made wild guesses at all kinds of crises
and at all manner of important disclosures to be made, but it was
only a house party after all. There were a great many problems to be
solved, proposed legislative measures to be discussed, and with every
woman in the Cabinet off summering somewhere it was an excellent
opportunity for the Executive branch of the Government to do extra
work.
The distinguished gentlemen had to “double up” in rooms, too, so I
have often imagined that they got very little rest at any time. The
Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury had the
southeast room; the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the
Interior had the northeast room; the Attorney General and the
Secretary of Commerce and Labour had the northwest room; the
Postmaster General had Robert’s room; the Secretary of Agriculture
had the housekeeper’s room, and the Secretary to the President had
my son Charlie’s room. I think probably as a house party it was
unique, but if there had been any more Departments of Government
the President would have had to fit up a dormitory.
© Harris & Ewing.

THE LONG EASTERN CORRIDOR

THROUGH WHICH GUESTS ARRIVE
FOR STATE FUNCTIONS
 © Harris & Ewing.

THE MAIN STAIRWAY LEADING TO

THE PRESIDENT’S PRIVATE
APARTMENTS

At this point in Archie Butt’s record I find the note: “Mrs. Taft left
this morning for New York to fit her son Charlie out in long
trousers.”
That brings up unpleasant memories. Like any sensible woman I
never would admit that I had reached the high point in life as long as
I had one son still in knickerbockers, but with one son at Yale, with a
young lady daughter ready to be presented to society, and with
Charlie going into long trousers I felt that the day was approaching
when the unhappy phrase “getting on in years” might be applied to
me.
The very rapid lengthening of Charlie’s legs had been a subject of
much discussion at Beverly during the summer and the necessity for
bestowing upon him the dignity of man-style garments had been
manifest to everybody sometime before I would consent to recognise
it.
One day the telephone rang and Helen answered it. A voice at the
other end of the line said:
“I’d like to speak to Master Charlie Taft, please.”
“Somebody wants to speak to you, Charlie,” said Helen. Then
sister-like she stood by to see who it was and what he could possibly
want with her unimportant younger brother. She was surprised to
hear this half of a very earnest conversation:
“Who said so?”
“Certainly not!”
“Well, somebody has been giving you misinformation.”
“An absolute denial.”
“Well, if you want to quote me exactly you may say that I said the
rumour is false; wholly without foundation.”
“All right. Good-bye.”
Helen was sufficiently startled to place Charlie under cross-
examination at once. She had visions of grave complications wherein
he played the unfortunate part of a President’s son who had
forgotten the rigid discretion exacted of him by the nature of his
position.
Charlie admitted that it was a reporter who had called him up.
“Couldn’t you tell that from the way I talked to him?” said he.
He had heard enough such conversations to have acquired the
natural “tone,” but he insisted that the subject of his conversation
with his reporter was “purely personal” and had nothing whatever to
do with his sister nor yet with any matters of high importance to the
Government.
The question had to be referred to the President, his father, before
he would admit that the reporter wanted to write something about
his going into long trousers.
“And if that isn’t a personal matter,” said he, “I should like to know
what is.”
To his intense delight, his “absolute denial” to the contrary
notwithstanding, I fitted him out, kissed my baby good-bye and sent